Modeling the relationships between cognitive-linguistic skills and writing in Chinese among elementary grades students

The present study is a four-year longitudinal study examining the important predictors of writing of 340 Chinese children in elementary grades. Children’s transcription skills (handwriting skills and spelling), and syntactic skills in grade 1 were significant predictors of text writing in grade 1–4 while ideation in grade 1 only contributed to text writing in grade 2. Stroke order knowledge was shown as an important handwriting skill in Chinese reflecting the characteristics of the Chinese orthography. A model of Chinese writing in early elementary grades was proposed. In the model, orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness and handwriting skills are proposed to contribute to spelling which is correlated with text writing. Handwriting skills, ideation, and syntactic skills were found to contribute to text writing. Path analysis results suggest that the longitudinal relationship between spelling and text writing is bidirectional.